Ida B. Wells and Anti-Lynching Activism

Ida B. Wells was a journalist, lecturer, civil rights leader, and the leading activist against lynching during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “Lynching” refers to an instance when a person or group of people acting outside the law physically punishes another person, often resulting in death. During Reconstruction and after, instances of lynching in the US rose dramatically as Southern white communities targeted, threatened, and killed African Americans, often with little or no justification, in an attempt to maintain social, economic, and political power.

Ida B. Wells was born in rural Mississippi in the midst of the Civil War. As a young adult, Wells moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she became a teacher and soon took a stand against Jim Crow segregation. In 1889, Wells became co-owner and editor of The Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, which she used to speak out against racial injustice. When three of her friends were lynched in retribution for their economic success and a mob of white residents destroyed the office of her newspaper, Wells was forced to leave Memphis, but she continued her anti-lynching activism as a writer, journalist, and lecturer.

Ida B. Wells was also involved in women’s rights activism, specifically focusing on African American women, and was among the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. She married racial justice activist and lawyer Ferdinand Barnett in 1895 and settled in Chicago, where she became one of the leading members of the Chicago black community and worked on another newspaper, The Conservator. Ida B. Wells-Barnett stepped back from public engagements and travel while she raised her four children, but remained committed to racial justice and ran for Illinois state senator in 1930, though she did not win. The documents and images in this primary source set follow the development of Ida B. Wells’ career as a journalist and activist and also represent the practice of lynching that she dedicated her career to fighting against.

Discussion questions

Examine the title pages of Southern Horrors and A Red Record. Compare the use of imagery, color, and text. What do you think Wells was trying to convey to her audience? How do you think she wanted her readers to feel when they saw her publications?

What do you interpret the title A Red Record to mean? In what ways does Wells employ irony in the pamphlet’s subtitle, “Respectfully submitted to the Nineteenth Century civilization in ‘the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave’”?

Using the court record from Wells’ lawsuit against the railroad company and her portrait from 1893, imagine Wells in the scene that she recounts on the train and, later, in a courtroom providing the recorded testimony. What does Wells’ testimony reveal about her character?

Lynchings were sometimes planned, public events that people came to watch. Using the lynching announcements that were reprinted in The Crisis and the photograph of a lynching, explain why the “committee of Ellisville citizens” and other white groups or individuals wanted these events to be public. Why do you think the men, women, and children who attended wanted to watch? What would it have felt like to be an African American citizen of Ellisville, Mississippi or Columbus, Georgia at this time?

What does her address say about what Ida B. Wells hoped to achieve with her speaking tour in England and Ireland?

What does the letter by Ida B. Wells to Albion Tourgee reveal about their relationship? Analyze what this letter and the address reveal about public perception of Ida B. Wells. How do you think she felt about pushback she received from the media or other reform leaders?

Read the introduction to Wells’ A Red Record online. Compare the introduction to The Tragedy of Lynching. Do you think Milton and Raper had read Wells’ work as part of their research? How are their approaches and tones different from hers?

Classroom activities

Ask students to select one of the specific instances of lynching in the set: the John Hartfield lynching, one of the cases included in A Red Record, or the lynching mentioned in A. M. Middlebrook’s letter. Ask students to conduct outside research on each case or the context for the case by learning more about the time and place in which it occurred. Ask students to write a short speech from Ida B. Wells’ perspective responding to the lynching they selected. Host a mock community meeting at which students deliver their speeches.

Read the Equal Justice Initiative’s article about Mamie Lang, who was present during John Hartfield’s lynching. Lead a class discussion comparing the perspective of Lang and her family with the perspective expressed in the local newspaper excerpts. Ask students to reflect on this case and differing perspectives in a creative project (a poem, spoken word piece, drawing, painting, song, etc.).

About This Guide

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